This Time Tomorrow
by rabidkoala
Summary: Stiles has a pre-wedding epiphany and drags Lydia along on a midnight adventure.


She's dreaming about riding a werewolf (literally, you perverts), but subconsciously, in some deep dark corner of her mind she knows that she shouldn't be dreaming about riding werewolves, literally or sexual innuendo-ly because she's supposed to be doing something else tomorrow. Something huge. Now if she could only remember what it was.

She's tossing and turning uncomfortably between the sheets, uncomfortable because there's too much space somehow, because his warm and occasionally drooling presence is missing, and she insisted she didn't care about this bad luck superstitious mumbo jumbo, but he wouldn't listen so she'd had to concede. And she knows she's supposed to put her foot down, but when he looks at her like that with his eyes all sad and brown and beautiful, she finds herself saying okay to almost anything.

And then she hears it.

It's a loud, unmistakable sound of branches breaking- branches at this time of the night, what fresh hell is this she wonders as she sleepily thrashes around, trying to untangle herself from the sheets.

She sits up, but there's silence for a minute so she convinces herself that it was just a stray coyote practicing its parkour skills and this is a worrying thought by itself but she's too sleepy to worry so she lets herself fall back onto the covers.

But then she hears it again, a kind of scratching and then a huge THUD, which is enough to get her on her feet in an instant. She makes her way to the window slowly, grabbing a stray baseball bat near the table and holding it up threateningly.

She sees a figure on the snow struggling to get up, and she instantly recognizes its gangly limbs and awkward posture and she doesn't know if she's relieved that its not a kung-fu coyote or shocked that he's here at 2 am.

She opens the window and kind of whisper-yells at him, "Stiles!"

He looks up, still a little dazed from his fall, but his face breaks into a relieved grin when he sees her.

"Oh thank god, Lydia. I thought for sure a coyote was gonna maul me and carry me away into the forest."

"Don't speak too soon, Stilinski. If you don't have a satisfactory explanation for this midnight rendezvous I might just call up some coyote buddies." She hisses.

"I do, I swear. But you'll have to come down here for it to make proper sense. It'll just sound like gibberish from up there."

"You always sound like gibberish, Stilinski." She says tiredly.

His face falls and even from up here she can't stand to see him disappointed so she groans, "Be there in a minute."

She walks out the front door with one of his ratty sweatshirts on and a beanie that he got her on one of their disastrous skiing adventures in Vermont Or Switzerland she can't remember which, and immediately feels like she's been shoved into a walk-in freezer.

"Hey." He grins as she walks up to him.

His breathing is ragged, and she swears his face is a little blue from the cold. For a minute she wonders how long he's been out here, but she's too irritated and befuddled and sleep-deprived (you try going shopping with Allison) to really dwell on the thought.

"What are you doing here, you idiot?" She says sluggishly, still rubbing the sleep out of her eyes.

He watches her apprehensively for a minute as if waiting for her to grow fangs and snap at him any moment, surprised that he hasn't been subjected to a Lydia Martin banshee bitchfest yet for showing up at her window at 2 in the night, and not just any night either.

"Big day tomorrow, huh." He says brightly, putting on a brave face but she sees that he seems a little nervous and it makes her nervous too.

"Please tell me you're not here to make sure that I'm still agreeing to go through with it." she sighs, rubbing her palms together and blowing on them to keep warm. This action does nothing to keep her warm, so the gentleman that he is, Stiles rubs her palms together and blows hot air on them, and she won't admit it, but he definitely does it better and she practically feels the colour returning to her cheeks.

"No that's not it, I swear. But I'm surprised you haven't hulked out on me yet." He laughs nervously.

"I'm so sleepy that I don't even know if you're real yet, Stilinski and I can't think of any appropriate curse words even if you are."

"Right. I'm really sorry for showing up like this, did I say that already?"

"No."

"Okay, well, I am. But I couldn't sleep. And I don't know if I can do this, Lydia. I mean, I just…" the words come tumbling out before he can phrase them differently, and a little more articulately because judging by the shocked expression Lydia's features have taken on, he has definitely not said the right thing.

"You don't know if you can marry me?" she says incredulously.

"No, no, no, oh god Lydia, no. That's not what I meant at all, shit." He says hurriedly, stepping closer to her.

His expression changes then, and so do his eyes. They turn serious and very still for a moment. And despite the cold and the dark, she can still see the flecks of honey and gold in his brown eyes and for a minute she just gazes at them in amazement, wondering how brown they really are and she contemplates kissing him to shut him up before realizing that he's just said he doesn't want to marry her, a small voice in her head sternly ordering her, _Put it back in your pants, Martin_, forcing her to pay attention to the words coming out of his mouth because this seems important.

"God, Lydia. Of course I still want to marry you. How can I not?" he's saying seriously, brushing off a snowflake from her soft strawberry blonde curls.

"Then what is it?" she asks, so completely confused and curious by his sudden change in behaviour.

"Lydia, I couldn't sleep all night, I've just been thinking about all sorts of things and I…" he trails off, fingering a strand of her hair fondly.

"Stiles."

"Yeah, sorry. I just get distracted by your hair. Like its so pretty and you've just gotten out of bed how is that even-"

"Stiles."

"Right, sorry. What was I saying? Okay, so I love you and you love me right?"

She sighs impatiently, "Not so sure on that last one Stilinski because I'm pretty sure I shouldn't be thinking up horrendously violent ways to kill you if I love you, yet here I am."

"Hahaha you're so cute when you're funny Martin," he says nervously, 90% sure she doesn't mean what she said but still not willing to test that theory.

"Okay, see. I want our wedding to be just us." He says carefully.

She furrows her eyebrows in confusion. "Just us?"

"Like, just the two of us. No one else."

Her face softens and she feels a spread of this strange warmth in her body, despite the fact that its minus 100 degrees right now. She's not irritated anymore but she thinks that has more to do with the fact that she's too busy freezing her ass off to feel anything than this complete and total dork standing in front of her at 2 in the night and being so adorable that her heart is threatening to break into song.

"Why?" she asks, ignoring the stupid smile creeping up on her face.

He takes her hands in his, and looks down at them while he answers, "I know its really stupid, and we'll still get married in front of everyone tomorrow of course, but I want to do it alone first."

He looks up at her sheepishly.

"You still haven't told me why."

"Because," he lets go of her hands to flail around for a bit because Stiles is Stiles and just _cannot _make a point without his arms all over the place.

"These people Lydia, they're just that. People. No I mean, yeah there's my dad, and your mom, and Scott, and Allison and we love them, but they're here _now_ and they-"

"Won't be here later?" she completes.

"Yeah, something like that. All these people around us might not be with us forever, but we'll be with us forever, you understand?" he says.

He doesn't know how to explain it to her without sounding like a complete moron, but he wants this to be just them. Because people will come and go, but Stiles Stilinski and Lydia Martin were meant to conquer the world together, and Beacon Hills was home, certainly, but it wasn't the world. And these people would leave them, or they would leave these people, but they'd never leave each other, right. So it was only fitting that their wedding consisted of the only two people that truly mattered to them.

She nods slowly, the beginning of a smile forming on her face, and for a moment Stiles can't believe she's agreeing to this impulsive, stupid thing but then he remembers that she'd agreed to marry him, so its obvious she'll agree to anything.

Of course she'd agree though, because he probably didn't know it and she wouldn't admit it, but she'd go to the moon with this boy if he asked.

"So what, you want to get married now?" she asks, her eyes gleaming with mischief and he swears she's never looked more beautiful, snowflakes caught in her wild, messy hair that's so lovely he refuses to believe she's just woken up, and a malicious glint in her striking green eyes which only appears when she's about to do something wrong and her soft pink lips caught between a grin and a laugh, not wanting to humour him but not being able to suppress her excitement.

"I uh, yeah." He says, looking a little apologetic for pulling her along on this idiotic midnight escapade, but she doesn't think he should because god, this is exciting and fun and spontaneous and just so incredibly Stiles that she wonders why she ever thought he'd just quietly walk down the aisle with her.

"Okay, wait." She stops in her tracks, and he turns back quizzically.

"Where are we doing this? Like do we say vows and stuff, I don't get it." she breathes. This sounded great in theory, but did Stiles have a concrete plan or was he just _anything goes _at this point.

He frowns in concentration and is lost in thought when she brings him back to reality with a hard punch on his shoulder.

"Stiles!"

"Yeah, sorry, I didn't really expect you to agree so willingly, so I kind of don't really have a plan." He says apologetically.

She rolls her eyes exasperatedly. This boy.

"You're an idiot."

"So I've been told."

"Come on." She says, dragging him away from the forest and onto the road, because she's just thought of something and she'll be damned if he fucks this perfect night up by showing up with this crazy romantic idea and then marrying her in a McDonald's or something.

"Lydia, why are we here?" he asks curiously when she stops and turns to face him.

"Look closely silly, its snowed in but it's the playground." She says, beaming.

He does as ordered, and the snow covered figures begin to take familiar shapes. The swing set that he and Scott used to try crazy acrobatics on, and he suddenly goes back to the time that he broke his arm trying to fly off the swing's highest point and Scott crying at the sight of his arm in a cast the next day. And the see-saw they'd play 'I Spy' on and Stiles would always pick Lydia and Scott would guess on his very first try and speaking of Lydia-

He looks down at where they're standing and recognizes the edges of a sandbox and his face breaks out into a wide grin.

"The place where I first saw you." he looks up at her, eyes filled with wonder and she beams back.

"Its only fair to finish it where we started it." she says, grinning.

He takes a deep breath.

"So we're really doing this then?" he tries to keep a straight face, but a stupid grin is forcing its way onto his face.

"In a CalTech Sweatshirt and a Batman T-shirt, yes." She smiles back.

She thinks back to freshman Lydia for a minute and can picture her giving present Lydia a disgusted look and cringing at the thought of being caught dead in a sweatshirt and bedhead, much less _getting married _like that. it almost makes her laugh. Because this is Stiles. She's fought monsters with him, and shared Reese's with him and he wouldn't care if she showed up in pajamas and a ratty t-shirt to the real wedding tomorrow. He'd just flash her that crooked smile he saves just for her and make a sarcastic remark like, "If I knew we weren't doing fancy clothes, we could've done this without any." Or something funnier because the real Stiles is wittier than the one in her head.

"Okay."

"Okay."

"So vows, then?" she asks uncertainly.

"I'll go first." He says confidently.

He takes her hands in his, and begins.

"Lydia Martin, I promise to always honor your claim of shotgun on Roscoe, even if Scott is involved, make my famous chocolate chip pancakes for you when you're PMS-ing, okay all the time, and I promise to always share Reese's with you in sickness and in health. Although Reese's in sickness may not be a stellar idea and god this speech is cringe worthy and I'm really sorry but like I said before, I didn't think you'd agree to this madness but tomorrow I'll say the serious vows I promise."

She laughs so loudly when he's done that he has to shush her, and he moves closer to kiss her because she looks fucking beautiful and he can't wait anymore, but backs off obediently when she says sternly, "Not yet, Stilinski," and clears her throat.

"Stiles Stilinski, I promise to occasionally let you win at board games _only _if I decide you really need it, I promise to watch Star Wars with you once a month, no that's too generous, once a year. And these vows are as awful as yours only because I dumbed them down to your level and not because I'm incapable of coming up with really good ones on the spot, just thought you should know."

He produces a ring from the back pocket of his jeans, not before fumbling around for a few minutes while she watches impatiently, and slips it on her finger.

And then he says in a really deep voice, "You may kiss the bride."

And she laughs hysterically until he stops her with his cold, frosty lips and they have to stop to catch their breaths because they're laughing so hard and the walk home is long and arduous because there's snow everywhere and they're still wet from when Lydia playfully pushed him in the snow and he dragged her down with him by accident but the whole thing is so surreal that when she whispers "See you tomorrow" in his ear and he kisses her long and hard and says "I will" with a crooked smile and a naughty wink, she wonders long after he's driven off into the night if this was all just a dream but then her clothes are soaked through and so are her shoes and so it can't have been a dream, can it.


End file.
